Follow the Progress of "Operation Compassion"
August 14, 2009
As the summer winds down our Operation Compassion teams at Faith Harbor will be meeting to evaluate our program and discuss ways to branch out into our community. This meeting will be on Saturday the 22nd at 10:00 am at the church and is open to EVERYONE! You do not need to be a member of an Operation Compassion team or our church to attend. For any of you that would like more information on what we do or would like to join us in our efforts, please plan to attend this planning session. This session will last until about two hours and a light lunch will be served at the conclusion of our time.
Thanks to our entire church family for the support of this program and the difference that your support has made in the lives of our military families both here and abroad!
Blessings to all and feel free to contact me for any further information on Operation Compassion.
July 24, 2009
Our Faith Harbor family continues to help our military both local and deployed. Our pilot program will be ending in August and we will be having a planning session for our next steps on August 22nd from 10:00 am to about noon at the church. We will be serving a light lunch at the conclusion of the session. We encourage any of our congregation who would like to learn more about our program or who are interested in joining one of our care teams to attend this meeting. Please let Lois Snyder know if you plan to attend by August 20th.
Thank you and God bless our military!
July 10, 2009
I recently received this email from Sgt. Major Prince who is the leader of the men in Iraq from our National Guard and the leader of the four men who lost their lives on June 29th.
This expressed so perfectly why we need to continue to pray for these brave young men and women overseas and shows how much our support through packages and mail helps. I have placed the address of the Sgt. Major in an envelope on the bulletin board facing the bathrooms at church. If anyone wants to send letters or packages, he will make sure that they get to the troops who are getting no mail.
I will have the flat rate mailers in church again on the first Sunday in August to send to the addresses of the four young men that we had word on before.
To each of you, thank you and God bless you for supporting our precious troops serving abroad. Lois
July 2, 2009
At this very special time of year we would like to thank our military and their families for their dedication to all of us. We appreciate all that they do and the sacrifices that they make to allow us to enjoy the freedoms that this great county allows. We have a very special group of military folks at Faith Harbor and what an honor it is to serve our Lord and Savior with them.
June 26, 2009
Our care teams have been blessed to serve our Faith Harbor military friends. When the summer ends we will be branching out into the surrounding community and will be looking for other families that we can support. Our teams ask that each of you prayerfully consider who we can reach out to and please spread the word in the neighborhoods that you live in. Our only team that hasn't been called on as of yet is our yard care team and I know that Duane Brown, the leader of this team, is ready and waiting to see some of the action.
Because of the sacrifice of time and talents from Clayann Binning, Dawn Ellis and Jean Hawley, our child care team and many of our church members have been trained in First Aid/CPR and our Safe Sanctuary mandate from the District.
Many of our Faith Harbor members and our visitors took flat rate mailer boxes to fill and send to the young men in Iraq who haven't been receiving any mail. These packages will mean the world to these young soldiers who are feeling very forgotten. Thank you all and please know that I plan to repeat this process in about six weeks.
Blessings,
Lois
June 19, 2009
Thank you to everyone who attended the safe sanctuary training and to Dawn and Jean for conducting the trainings. Our teams met last Saturday and we briefly discussed where we are and our plans to spread the word of Operation Compassion to the military living in our community who are not a part of Faith Harbor.
We received a beautiful thank you note for what we are doing from Dennis Goodwin our District Superintendant. I will be hanging it on the bulletin board by the kitchen for all to see so please stop by and see his kind and inspiring words.
Thank you to everyone who picked up a mailer last Sunday to send to the young men who are not receiving any mail. You are all so kind and generous and I remain in awe of how the Lord is working in lives of those who attend our church. I will be repeating the mailing boxes again at the beginning of August and plan to stay in touch with the Command Sergeant Major and see if the mail situation is improving and if he has anyone else who needs some kind words and goodies from home. Thank you all again! Lois
June 12, 2009
I have had many of our wonderful Faith Harbor Family ask if there is anything that they can do to support Operation Compassion. I want to share with you a message that I received from Billy Spencer last Sunday that identifies an immediate need. The gentleman that he got this message from is a Command Sergeant Major who is with the Army National Guard and is deployed to Mahmudiyah.
Message from Command Sergeant Major Prince.....These four Soldiers on FOB Mahmudiyah, in Iraq are not getting any packages and have a greater than 95% chance of not getting any. A card or a shoe box of candy, beef jerky, a devotional book, etc would be great. They are as follows:
PV2 Justin Skinner
PFC David Laws
PFC Chris McKinney
SPC Curtis Putman
Their addresses will all be as follows:
Rank, Name
A Battery 113th
FOB Mahmudiyah, Iraq
APO AE 09322
Message from our District Superintendent Dennis Goodwin......This may strike a chord with a few of your members. If so, give them an opportunity to respond. I cannot begin to tell you the despondency that is so evident in the faces of those soldiers who receive nothing from home. They feel no one cares. Let's prove them wrong.
I can certainly say it no better then these two retired military members and this is what I suggest we at Faith Harbor do.
- Any of us who are moved by this can send cards and notes on an ongoing basis to these men.
-I will have eight prepaid mailers at church on Sunday with the addresses of these men printed on them and a pocket prayer shawl for each of them. I am going to request that eight people attending Sunday services pick up a box and fill it up and mail it off.
-I will remain in contact with SGTMGR Prince to see of any further needs and we may redo this process as often as needed.
I know that other churches have received word of this also and I hope that these young men are flooded with the love that comes from God. This may be just the thing to make a wonderful and lasting change in their young lives.
May 29, 2009
Operation Compassion - Our pilot program is up and running. We feel very honored and blessed to do some small part to thank the military families of our church who do so much and sacrifice so much for all of us. Clayann Binning has spent hours organizing CPR/First Aid training for our childcare team and anyone else in our congregation who was interested in receiving the two year certificate. Through the generosity of our New Bern District, a grant of $500.00 was received to help with this training. Dawn Ellis is offering two additional Safe Sanctuary training sessions for all who have any interest in working with our children or youth this year. This training is to protect our children and child care workers and to give our parents the confidence of knowing that their precious children are in safe and qualified hands. I will have an Operation Compassion table set up in the narthex on May 31st and June 7th before and after the 9:30 service to provide information and to answer questions that anyone may have about Operation Compassion. This will be the perfect time for our military not yet signed up to do so!!
May 8, 2009
Operation Compassion - We are ready to begin our Operation Compassion outreach to our military and their families on May 11th. Our care teams have been formed and trained, we have held an ice cream social for our military friends and we are excited to get started. If you are in the military and would like more information about the support that we have been called to give, please contact Lois Snyder at snyderss@live.com or see Lois after church on Sunday mornings. If you would like to support this program and are unable to volunteer your time, we are in need of gift cards to cover our teams out of pocket expenses. As we are doing lawn care, minor home maintenance, meals and child care we need gift cards for Lowes, Hess gas station and Food Lion. These gift cards can be placed in the labeled basket on the information station in the narthex. If it would be easier for you to make a cash/check donation please just drop it into the offering plate on Sunday morning and I will make sure the gift cards are purchased. If you are putting a check in please write Operation Compassion on the memo line so the money goes to the right place. Thank you for your continued prayers for our military and the sacrifices that they and their families give for our freedom.
April 24, 2009
Thank you to everyone who attended our Operation Compassion training last Saturday. Our care teams are formed, leaders of those teams are selected and our ice cream social for our military families is planned for May 3rd at 3:00 pm. Many of you have asked how you can help and we have a way to involve you. We need gift cards for Hess gas station, Food Lion and Lowes. These gift cards can be from $5.00 to $15.00 and will be used to purchase the materials that our care teams need to do their jobs. The teams are volunteering all of the time and I feel it only right that we do something to help cover the expenses that they will have for yard care, home maintenance and meals. We have even had an offer of help from another church. God is good and to Him be the glory. For any questions or more information, please contact Lois Snyder at 346-2686 or at: snyderss@live.com. There will be a box on the welcome center to place the gift cards in on Sunday mornings. Thank you and may God bless all of you and our Operation Compassion program.
April 17, 2009
Our community truly responded to God's call to get volunteers for Operation Compassion's Pilot Program that will be happening this summer. We have had close to thirty surveys returned and will be able to create our Care Teams to be God's hands and feet with our military families. The training session to form these teams and pass along vital information is tomorrow, April 18th, at 10:00 am at the church. It is important for all of you who responded to the survey and who attended the first session to attend this meeting if at all possible. Please contact Lois Snyder if you have any questions or need more information about Operation Compassion. We ask that all of our Faith Harbor community be in prayer for this project as we begin.
April 10, 2009
Our Operation Compassion training session is over and we had a very good showing of folks who have felt the tug from the Lord to put action into our words of support for our military families. We realize that many of you were not able to attend the training but want to be a part of what we are doing at Faith Harbor. We will be having a follow up training that will be much shorter than the original one at the church on the 18th starting at 10:00 am. We will be addressing our plan of support and developing teams to go out and begin. We will be focusing on yard care, minor home repair and meals/childcare as our pilot for the summer. In August we will meet again and see if we need to branch out and to evaluate how effective the first leg our journey was. Barb Schilling has developed a survey that all of you should be receiving that will let me know who is able to actively support us this summer. Please be looking for it in your e-mail and feel free to contact me if you have any questions. The form is also available on our www.faithharborumc.org website. Click on ministries, scroll down and then click on Operation Compassion. The best way to reach me is at snyderss@live.com. I can also be reached by phone at 346-2686 at most times other than from 1:45pm to 6:30pm on Monday through Thursday as that is when I am working.
By filling out the survey you are not committing to working on this every week. We will have a team of folks lined up that will offer what our families need and we will then contact our teams. There will also be some "seed" money available to help pay for fuel and other materials needed for yard work. If you are able to fill the need at that time, we will plug you in. I appreciate all of our busy schedules and don't want having to attend the meeting on 18th to limit our volunteers. There is some very important information that needs to be shared prior to working with our families and I am committed to meet with each of you individually if that would help. We ask that you follow your hearts and pray about your involvement in this outreach project. We will have volunteer survey forms in the pew pads on Sunday if some of you are as technically challenged as I am. Please place them in the offering plate and I will be contacting you soon.
April 3, 2009
In an effort to staff our "Care Teams" for Operation Compassion, our intentional military outreach program, we need your help!! We have identified three areas that we would like to pilot for the summer; lawn care, home maintenance and food/childcare projects. If you wish to participate in any of these three areas, we would like to hear from you on the form attached. We need this information no later than Sunday, April 12th. You may print out the attachment and return the hardcopy to the church or you may contact Lois Snyder at snyderss@live.com with your information. Please prayerfully consider this opportunity.
March 20, 2009
Don't forget our Operation Compassion training tomorrow here at Faith Harbor. This training will allow us to create an invaluable outreach ministry to the military families in our community. One military outreach ministry we have already started is through our pocket prayer shawls. This is an ongoing ministry and we need a continual supply of the prayer cards. The cards provide that personal touch of love and caring that our military deserve. The cards that have been written so far are amazing and warm my heart as well as put tears in my eyes. Thanks to all of you for supporting this ongoing ministry.
March 6, 2009
Recently the New Bern District of the United Methodist Church received a three year grant from the Duke Endowment and the Citizen-Soldier Support Program. The program, Working Miracles in Peoples Lives: connecting Veterans, Military Personnel and their Families to Pastoral and Congregant Care is a pilot program. This is an ecumenical program. Training for this program has been designed by Dr. John Oliver and Dr. Harold Kudler of the Durham VA. The training for this will be hosted by the North Carolina Eastern Health Education Center (eahec.ecu.edu).The first phase of the training is for pastors, behavioral health professionals and health professionals. The second phase of the training will be for volunteer congregants who have a passion for helping our military and veteran families. Training for the second phase, Operation Compassion, will be held at Faith Harbor UMC on March 21st from 10:00am to 3:00pm. The training will include lecture time, small group discussion time and a question/answer period. Taking this training does not commit you to the program, but it does give you an opportunity to learn more in order to determine if you want to be involved.
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